RSAA Colloquia / Seminars / Feast-of-Facts: Tuesday, 17 November 2020, 09:00-10:00; ZOOM 997 8534 1005


Sandrine Thomas

"Invited Colloquium: The Vera C. Rubin Observatory: an Original System to Discover the Deep and Dynamic Universe"

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will capture images of the full southern sky every 3/4 nights. It will increase our knowledge of our deep and dynamic universe focusing on; (i) dark energy and dark matter, (ii) cataloging the solar system, (iii) Milky Way structure and formation and (iv) exploring the transient sky. The Rubin Obs. survey goals — wide, fast, deep — led to a very different observatory that required adaptation and optimization. The active optics for instance needed to be optimized to achieve the best image quality possible (still seeing limited) over its 3.5 degrees field of view, to enable such great research. In this presentation, I will briefly go over the science goals of Rubin Obs. and will talk in more details about their implications on the observatory design. In particular, I will focus on the strategy to obtain the image quality needed for such goals. I will also give an update of the Rubin Obs. construction.